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Sunday, October 14, 2012

Rumsfeld Defends Romney About Benghazi Embassy Attack.

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is defending Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for scoring political points by blaming “American weakness” for attacks on U.S. embassies in Egypt and Libya — even though terrorists attacked U.S. embassies 12 times during President George W. Bush’s tenure.

“It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks,” Romney had said over a statement from the U.S. embassy that denounced an anti-Muslim movie prior to the attacks.

That initial statement from the former Massachusetts governor and his press conference later in the day were both panned as “irresponsible” and “craven.”

The neoconservative former Defense secretary took to Twitter on Wednesday afternoon to weigh in on the side of Romney.

“The attacks on our embassies & diplomats are a result of perceived American weakness,” Rumsfeld wrote. “Mitt Romney is right to point that out.”

As The Daily Dolt noted on Thursday, terrorists attacked U.S. embassies 12 times while President George W. Bush was in office. At least eight of those attacks occurred while Rumsfeld was serving as secretary of Defense.

Including the attacks on Tuesday, U.S. embassies have come under attack twice since Obama took office.

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86 Muslims arrested in US consulate attack in India

Chennai: Eighty-six people were arrested on Friday after a group of several hundred Muslim protesters threw stones and smashed windows at the US consulate in the Indian city of Chennai, police said.

“They smashed the window panes, surveillance camera and tried to scale over the compound wall, but we dispersed them while exercising restraint,” a senior police officer said on condition of anonymity. “We made 86 arrests.”

The violence flared during a protest organised by the Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam, an Islamist movement, against an anti-Islam film which has triggered similar protests in large parts of the Muslim world.

The protesters also burnt an effigy of US President Barack Obama and an American flag, police said.

One group hurled stones, while others lifted iron barricades placed in front of the main gate to smash windows, police said.

“We have tightened the security and the situation is well under control,” JK Tripathy, the police commissioner in the southern city, told local reporters.

One of the organisers said that what had been planned as a peaceful protest was hijacked by militants.

“We wanted to organise a peaceful demonstration to express our dismay over the film, but the youngsters, who could not hold their nerves, ran and attacked the consulate office,” Gunangudi Hanifa told AFP.

A spokesman for the consulate, who did not give his name, said that no staff had been hurt in the attack.